Unannounced Return
by Sentry-Turret-Avi
Summary: Wheatley has been banished to space. GLaDOS has moved on to testing with two robots. Chell? Chell is free with no intentions of returning to Aperture, but when she finds another human, with an ambition of finding someone, will she dare to risk her life and help the other person find their loved one?


The clouds danced above her head. The noise of the wind blowing the countless amount of wheat spread out in front of her calmed her. The noise _was_ quieter than the constant buzz and taunts of the robots she had dealt with for the last, how long was it again. The massive facility was all she remembered. All other memories seemed to be... gone. Inexistent.

Now that her days of battling with the small robots that were programmed to kill, were over she had all the time her mortal body would allow her to herself. No more orders, blatantly yelled out over the intercom telling her to continue with the strenuous testing. No more Wheatley. No more GLaDOS; Finally.

From what she could tell, the field seemed to be limitless, and to her very small memory of the first time she deactivated the massive AI, the facility was probably surrounded by fences. State of the art ones at that. Ones that defiantly gave the look of "Don't even think about it."

So it was just her and her little friend, a gray cube with hearts painted on it. The cube was charred on a few sides, but still useful, shading her from the Sun when it got hot and as a seat. Why she used it as a seat, she didn't know, nor consider thinking of it.

The former Test Subject knew what she wanted to achieve next. She wanted to strip off an Aperture Science brand product from her. Surely the Long Fall Boots saved her many times, keeping her from breaking both her legs, or even straight up death, but they were no longer needed.

Her fingers made their way down to her boots, carefully undoing the dirt-caked straps. One by one they came loose until all of them were off. She slid the first boot off. It felt weird for her. After so many years, decades, even centuries of wearing them, it felt weird to have them removed.

When she started on the second boot, she smelled a faint scent. She remembered that, almost identical scent from before. She got up, her heart racing. Should she be trying to escape the scent, get as far away as possible? Her headfirst, tenacious attitude got the best of her as she decided to follow it and see what caused it.

She grabbed the one loose boot and started to run towards the scent, through the seemingly infinite wheat fields. She almost immediately tripped and landed in the soft, fresh wheat. She got up and dusted off her orange jumpsuit and glanced back at the direction she was running from. She thought for a second, of returning to it, giving up the chase and being safe with her cube somewhere else.

She didn't take the chance as she ripped off her other boot and started to run towards the scent again. As the scent became stronger, so did smoke. The smoke was not a dark colour, as the smoke that came from the electrical fires Wheatley somehow caused. It was lighter, but still defiantly smoke coming from some source of fire.

She wouldn't give up, continuing her pace as she ran towards the source. The field started to fade into grass and dirt. She still continued. As she started to see some of the embers that were producing the fire, she started to slow down.

The fire wasn't spreading as fast as she thought it was. She decided to go closer to investigate. The closer she got, the more it started to look like it was a planned fire gone wrong. The area was surrounded by some trees that looked like they fell down many decades before the fire started, and there were stones, failing at containing the fire.

She felt a small touch at her side, and she turned her head to see what it was. Much to her surprise it was a smaller human. The human was pointing at somewhere farther away from the fire. She decided to take its advice and slowly back away as it started to kick some of the soil into the fire, trying to contain it. The fire flickered before slowly growing dimmer.

The other human returned to her and smiled, putting a hand behind her back. She finally had time to examine the other human carefully. The human had wavy, blond hair and seemed to be younger than her. She looked at what the human was wearing and saw that it was wearing almost the identical jumpsuit that she was. Although there was a major difference; it was blue. The human didn't have any shoes or boots, but seemed to have some kind of support. She started to circle the human to see what it was.

"Advanced Knee Replacements" she thought to herself, seeing the familiar device, although it was designed with pink trimmings.

The human beckoned her closer to the logs and sat down in front of the fire. She followed suit, seeing how the other human seemed friendly enough to trust. As she sat down, she put her boots beside her.

"I'm sorry about that." The human told her. "It doesn't usually happen."

She put on a small smile, and nodded.

"So what's your name?" The other human asked, looking at her intensely, waiting for an answer.

She simply shook her head and looked at the ground.

"My name is Melanie." The other girl said, putting out a hand to show her that it was okay to speak. The two shook hands. "But you can call me Mel." Mel took another look at the older lady. "Not much of a talker?" She asked.

She put on a frown and pointed to her neck and simply shook her head.

"What's the matter?" Mel asked, getting slightly concerned. "Did the fire do damage to your voice?"

She shook her head, looking around for something. She simply picked up a stick and started to draw in the dirt. Her hands shook as she did so, after not writing in so many years. She was somewhat successful in putting the letters down.

"Ch," Mel sounded out. "Che,"

She outlined the last two letters again.

"Chell?" Mel asked, looking up at the other girl.

Chell smiled, than nodded.

"Well it's nice to meet you then, Chell." Mel said, trying to change the subject to something else due to her low attention-span and wanting to 'break the ice'. She saw the tank-top Chell had on and gasped.

"You escaped too?!" She exclaimed. Chell simply nodded.

"I thought I was the only one to survive the first explosion." Mel said.

Chell shook her head.

"So we're the only two left." Mel said.

Chell shook her head, holding up three fingers.

"Another one? Where!" Mel exclaimed, hardly believing that another human could escape Aperture.

Chell shrugged and pointed back at the direction of the facility.

"Are you sure?" Mel asked her.

Chell once again picked up her stick and dragged it against the soil. _I heard voices behind a Testing Room._

"Who was it?" Mel questioned.

Chell shrugged.


End file.
